View 411 April 24 - 30, 2006 (original) (raw)

Sunday, April 30, 2006

More in the saga of Lisabetta. This is mostly to record what's happened; this will become the lead in the column when I manage to get a happy ending, which I think I will have.

Last night before I went to bed I disconnected the power supply. Lisabetta was completely charged. This morning, just for luck, I started her up.

First was the Microsoft Blue Screen. I used to jog wheel clicker to get into the HP utilities. This offered me the chance to start up in safe mode. I had no keyboard -- she was folded up with the keyboard under, and I sure didn't want to change configurations. -- so I used the jog wheel, which supposedly shifted to start in Safe Mode, but perhaps did not; the time was running down for start normally. Indeed, she started normally.

In fact, she came right up, Windows loaded, all was well -- except that we were headed for church and there was no time. So at 8:45 I plugged the power supply back in on the theory that it was better for the machine to keep running than to shut down.

That turned out not to be the case. Roberta was singing in the choir so we had to be an hour early, and she wanted breakfast so we didn't get back until about 12:45. Lisabetta was showing the black screen with "Operating System Not Found" message. Of course she was fully charged. She was also warm.

I unplugged the power supply and turned her off with the hardware switch. Waited an hour for coolth. Started her up. She started up just fine. I did not plug in the power supply.

Now to use the Belkin USB hub with its independent power supply. I plugged that in, plugged a Seagate 100GB External USB drive into that -- it draws power from the USB hub, but the Belkin Hub was powered with its own independent wall brick -- and copied OUTLOOK.PST over to the Seagate. For good measure I copied all the other files I could think of, even though they were probably already backed up.

When Lisabetta was trying to start in Safe Mode, the last file she tried to load was an agp driver in System32. Now I used Norton Windows Commander to copy that file to a new folder named FOO, renamed the original file to file.foo, and copied the file back into System32. Then I used DiskMapper to see how much room I had on Lisabetta's hard drive and what those files were. We were down to under 10%, so I copied the Chaosmanor directory -- that's this page and all its components -- to the Seagate, and deleted it from Lisabetta. Emptied the recycle bin. Now I am running VOPT, which is a disk optimizing program. It's a race whether VOPT will finish before the batteries run out -- I have got more than 4 hours use out of that battery charge -- and I am a bit afraid I will not be able to finish. The thing to do I think is to wait until there's not much power left, stop VOPT, then power her up and see if she'll just sit there charging.

I am going to have to get a copy of GHOST and install that, and ghost the entire drive off to an external; replace the hard drive; and bring the new stuff back in. I am pretty sure it's the hard drive that is the problem. I'll check to see if there's still warranty, and if not I'll just buy one.

I may also try Gibson's SPINRITE, but we'll see.

Well, I am getting the "external power or lose your work" message, so I have stopped VOPT, and plugged in the power. We will now see if she'll just sit there doing nothing but under power.

I am pretty sure the problem was heat.

I need to look into what disk replacements are available. I never went that deep inside Lisabetta before...

Anyone expert in using Ghost to replace the hard drive of a laptop is invited to let me know how this is done.

===================

Asserting the Principate.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/
articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/

---- Roland Dobbins

===

George Washington asserted the same rights, as did most early Presidents. The notion that the Supreme Court is the only arbiter of what is constitutional is a relatively recent theory. Hamilton would have had none of it, and Madison certainly ignored Marshal's ruling in Marbury vs. Madison. Jackson waxed obscene over some Supreme Court assertions of superiority.

The Courts are probably a bigger danger to the Republic than the Presidency, now that the Supreme Court routinely issues legislation and administrative decrees as if it were the House of Lords, not a court. In Kansas City the courts ran the school systems and levied taxes without a shadow of legislative authority, and Massachusetts courts presume to dictate to the legislature. Presidents can still be turned out. Judges in general cannot be, since there will generally be a minority in the legislature that, while unable to pass as law the decrees of the courts, will still be in favor of the decrees and thus be able to prevent impeachments.

Hamilton thought the Courts would be the weakest branch of the government. He turned out to be wrong. Bush may be acting to even some of the balance, and perhaps restore some judicial restraint.

And having said all that, this remains a matter of concern, and one wonders why Bush did not simply veto legislation he thought unconstitutional.

Another comment on the same article:

Subject: Ave Imperator: Smithy for a Crown

Let the Senate pass laws, and the judges deliberate. If the Emperor's servants don't listen to them, what do they matter?

At least we still have this: that they believe that the Emperor must be elected...

--Catfish N. Cod

But elected by whom? In Rome the Emperors (after Julius Caesar) held ordinary offices, and there continued to be elections for Consul and the other magistracies. Emperors sometimes stood for such offices, then stood down and allowed someone else to hold the office for the term; and sometimes just nominated Consuls and Praetors and Aediles and the like. Earlier, when the Republic existed in theory but was falling, Bibulus was co-consul to Julius Caesar; he claimed it to be the Consulate, not of Bibulus and Caesar, but of Julius and Caesar, and retired to his house to "watch the skies" for omens.

After Augustus, the army proclaimed an Emperor and the Senate hastened to ratify their decision. Sometimes parts of the army proclaimed Caesars. Then came civil wars. And Claudius was carried off to the Army camp shouting his loyalty to the Republic. Fat lot of good it did him. He turned out to be the key to setting up the infrastructure to make the Empire workable in the aftermath of Caligula, and it held even on the proclamation of Nero.

==================

Regarding Lisabeta the laptop: she's been working reliably for hours now. I have used Golden Bow VOPT to optimize the disk drive. I have shut down and restarted. All seems well.

Of course I intend to replace the hard drive, and I'll need to figure out how to do that, preferably without reinstalling everything. Ghost is I think what I need.

We'll be going home tomorrow so this won't be updated until Monday evening. Next week is column week, of course. There are also some E3 events but I won't be going to E3 itself. They show Press people want me to jump through too many hoops. I'll try to get to some of the evening shows, but I just don't feel like doing all the things they want me to do to prove I'm a real press person.

I understand that there are lots of people with personal blogs who want to be press, and who insist on press credentials, so that these events have to put some obstacles up; but they have gone farther than I care to go in doing it.

If anyone has experience with replacing a laptop drive, I'd like to hear about it.

===============

Monday Morning: Packing to get out of here. Much gubbage on TV about immigration. Apparently no one reads history.

Think Kossovo.

Sunday TOP Current View

Current Mail

This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 8,000 - 12,000 words, depending. (Older columns here.) For more on what this page is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE. If you have never read the explanatory material on that page, please do so. If you got here through a link that didn't take you to the front page of this site, click here for a better explanation of what we're trying to do here. This site is run on the "public radio" model; see below.

If you have no idea what you are doing here, see the What is this place?, which tries to make order of chaos.

Boiler Plate:

If you want to PAY FOR THIS, the site is run like public radio: you don't have to pay, but if no one does, it will go away. On how to pay, I keep the latest HERE. MY THANKS to all of you who have sent money. Some of you went to a lot of trouble to send money from overseas. Thank you! There are also some new payment methods.

If you subscribed:

atom.gif (1053 bytes) CLICK HERE for a Special Request.

If you didn't and haven't, why not?

If this seems a lot about paying think of it as the Subscription Drive Nag. You'll see more.

If you are not paying for this place, click here...

For information on COURSE materials, click here

For the BYTE story, click here.

Search: type in string and press return.

For Current Mail click here.

The freefind search remains: